All over North America, there are native asters growing in forests, along highways, in meadows, and in marshes. If you come across a tall or mid-sized hardy perennial plant with dainty little flowers about the size of lawn daisies, then the chances are that it will be an aster. But there’s a problem. There are hundreds of different wild asters growing around the world, including in North America.
Over the last 20 years, botanists have been naming and renaming these plants, shaking up the world of asters. This means that we’ve all had to get used to new scientific names for some familiar plants. Of course, we could just forget the botanical names and rely on common names. The problem is that the same plant can have different English common names, not to mention native American names, in different parts of the country. So using the correct scientific name is the only way we can all be sure that we’re talking about the same plant.
